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The cost of paid mods


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I've noticed the growing discussion around paid mods recently in the Ark community, which surprised me because I thought the Ark community had given up on the idea of "no paid mods". However, I realized that many in the Ark community might be new to this discussion, especially if they weren't part of earlier debates around modding. So, I wanted to share my thoughts on why paid mods are problematic. I'll keep it brief, but I encourage discussion—just keep it respectful, as this is meant to foster insight and constructive dialogue.

For context: I’m a modder with extensive experience in creating, editing, and experimenting with mods. I tend to cringe when I hear statements like 'Modders should be paid for their time.' There’s no inherent entitlement to payment—it’s not a job, it's a hobby. People do it for personal satisfaction, and part of the joy comes from sharing your work with others and seeing them enjoy it. That said, if you want to turn your hobby into a job or make money from it (like with premium mods), then you should enter a whole different realm with different rules. This includes responsibilities toward those who aren’t just fans anymore—they're paying customers. With that comes criticism, expectations, and the need to deliver on time. The same applies to commissioned mods.

1. The Cost Issue: The idea of charging $2–20 per mod quickly becomes financially restrictive for users. Mods are meant to customize and enhance your gaming experience, and some players use a handful while others use hundreds. Paying for each mod would limit the creative possibilities, making it harder to tailor the game to your liking. Moreover, Wildcard hasn't implemented a system where mods on servers don't require every player to purchase them, and it seems unlikely they will, possibly due to profit motives.

2. Unreliable Products: Mods are often plagued with bugs, incompatibilities, and other issues. Even with paid mods, these problems won’t disappear, and support can be inconsistent. When modders stop maintaining their work, users might end up paying for something that doesn’t function as expected. The community-driven support that steps in when mods are free could dwindle if modding becomes a pay-to-play environment. There are also already many unfinished mods being sold... Which a whole other issue.

3. Premium Mods gate Unofficial Servers
When hosting an Ark server, whether it's dedicated, self-hosted, or privately owned, players must purchase all DLC and premium mods themselves in order to join and play if the server has them installed. The server or session will not allow you to join otherwise. This creates a barrier for private server owners, like myself and others, as we're forced to avoid using DLC or premium mods. It's also creates a barrier for players who just want to play with friends. No one wants to pay extra just to play with friends or a group on unofficial servers, where 99% of the player base actually plays. As you know, the official Ark servers are notoriously bad for countless reasons, making unofficial servers the preferred choice.

For those who want to support modders, there are plenty of optional ways to do so. Many modders accept donations through platforms like Nexus, Ko-fi, Patreon, PayPal, or have monetized YouTube channels. These are great ways to show support without putting a paywall around our community, which ultimately undermines the spirit of modding.

As for Ark ASA. I would encourage you at least for now, to give the game a negative review on whatever platform you play. Unless Wildcards sees that players are not going to tolerate a certain behavior, they will just keep pushing it. And above all else, don't purchase paid mods, you aren't actually helping the game, or that creator. It's a cycle of exploitation that never should have been started. Just look at Bethesda...

Edited by Tiberius3223
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On 8/29/2024 at 11:28 AM, Tiberius3223 said:

which surprised me because I thought the Ark community had given up on the idea of "no paid mods".

It's important to always keep in mind that there's no such thing as "the Ark community", there are many different communities within ARK and they don't agree on what they want.

Why are there so many complaints about cheating? Because there are so many ARK communities that are fine with cheating. Most of the communities that play ARK strongly dislike, or even hate, cheating, but there are sizeable communities who believe that cheating is just fine as long as they don't get caught.

In every thread complaining that the game is becoming P2W there are people who defend the increasingly P2W nature of the game. There were plenty of people willing to defend the P2W Bob's DLC and to defend the P2W $5 dinosaur. The people who think P2W is ok are also part of 'the ARK Community', and that's because there's no such thing as "the" community, there are many different communities each with different, often conflicting, preferences.

On 8/29/2024 at 11:28 AM, Tiberius3223 said:

users might end up paying for something that doesn’t function as expected.

So, basically just like the rest of ARK.

I'm not making fun of your point, rather I'm pointing out that his is how WC-Snail treats their own game, so there's no reason to expect they'll have higher standards for paid mods than they have for themselves. Even though WC-Snail will never say it, paid mods are really micro-transactions, and if they can nickel-and-dime people to death with paid mods they don't really care how well the mods work.

On 8/29/2024 at 11:28 AM, Tiberius3223 said:

There are also already many unfinished mods being sold... Which a whole other issue.

Also just like ARK.

This was true during ASE and it's still going to be true in ASA. Most maps were unfinished, they just couldn't manage to figure out how to complete a map on a timeline that matched their goals and desired profit margins. Most of the maps (both paid and free) during ASE seemed full of potential at first but fizzled out at the end - missions that were horrible and were never fixed, caves that were obviously left uncompleted, portions of oceans that were dead and unpopulated, large areas of the map that weren't fully developed, and so on. Some maps were more complete than others, and a couple even felt fully finished, but most of the maps in ASE just had their development cut off based on a calendar deadline regardless of the fact that they had a long way to go before being finished.

Again, not making fun of you nor arguing with you, just pointing out that this has been WC-Snail's business model for almost the entire life of their product. There's no reason to expect they'll change now.

On 8/29/2024 at 11:28 AM, Tiberius3223 said:

As for Ark ASA. I would encourage you at least for now, to give the game a negative review on whatever platform you play. Unless Wildcards sees that players are not going to tolerate a certain behavior, they will just keep pushing it.

Much more important than negative reviews is refusing to pay for things. Reviews don't matter nearly as much as money. Ideally don't buy ASA, but if you already have then don't buy the P2W DLC's, don't buy paid mods, don't buy $5 dinosaurs.

Voting with your dollars is a whole lot more important than voting with reviews.

On 8/29/2024 at 11:28 AM, Tiberius3223 said:

For those who want to support modders, there are plenty of optional ways to do so. Many modders accept donations through platforms like Nexus, Ko-fi, Patreon, PayPal, or have monetized YouTube channels. These are great ways to show support without putting a paywall around our community, which ultimately undermines the spirit of modding.

WC-Snail don't care about any of those things, in fact they actively dislike any methods of giving money to modders that leaves WC-Snail out of the transaction. WC-Snail doesn't want players to donate to modders using Patreon, etc., their ultimate goal is for modders to only be paid through their own store so they can get a cut of every sale. They don't care about quality, they don't care about bugs, they don't care about completeness, they only care about getting their cut. They talk a lot about how they're doing it "for the modders" but that's just a bunch of marketing lies, really it's so they can get a cut.

 

Beyond that, it gets worse. If you've ever read or watched any of the interviews with the CEO of Snail his goals go even further, what he eventually wants to do is enable cash transactions between players (like selling dino's to each other, etc.) as long as WC-Snail gets a cut of those transactions also. The future that he wants to see (and I don't know if he'll be able to make it happen, but it's definitely what he wants) is that anything is fair game for modders and players to buy-and-sell... as long as WC-Snail gets a cut.

 

The only way to avoid supporting their business model is to refuse to spend money on the game - no money for DLC's, no money for mods. If you want to keep playing the game I get it, there is a lot to like about it in spite of the company being shady, but if you're going to do so then find a way to play it that will not give any more money to WC-Snail.

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On 9/1/2024 at 10:33 PM, Pipinghot said:

All the excellent points made...

I think we are at a crucial time for ASA's future. From the launch of ASA, snail have lost money. Last quarter they made a couple of million but still a couple of million behind for the year. The business is communicating "success" in the form of "Peak concurrent users" and other "not accurate but technically true" comments on the state of the game. Concurrent user count on Steam shows a steady decline in players. If the launch of Aberration does not generate a sustained growth of concurrent players then paid for mods are irrelevant. The reason being there will be less players left to buy them.

 

BTW, excellent point on "The Community". We are a diverse group of players with many different preferences beyond the single desire to play a Sci-Fi game with Dinosaurs in.

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#3 Perfectly describes Ark itself from the very beginning. Anyone who played "early access" back in 2015 and 2016 knows exactly what i'm talking about. So many fixes and updates were always "a little further out". In fact, the DX12 Engine Update was listed as one of those for many years before it vanishing... then years later reintroduced as Ark Survival Ascended. With a price of course.

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15 hours ago, AndrewLB said:

#3 Perfectly describes Ark itself from the very beginning. Anyone who played "early access" back in 2015 and 2016 knows exactly what i'm talking about. So many fixes and updates were always "a little further out". In fact, the DX12 Engine Update was listed as one of those for many years before it vanishing... then years later reintroduced as Ark Survival Ascended. With a price of course.


I think the best irony is that when Grove Street Games did the 2nd Ark port to Switch, they upgraded the Unreal Engine version to something like 4.26, which is something the core devteam has still never been able to do and is a big reason why DLSS never appeared on the OG Ark. Amazing how even just getting a porting company in suddenly leads to better results. (And of course, they didn't then take that new version and put it on PC so we could get the original Ark to run well)

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As a mod dev, I'd like to comment on this:

For starters, my mods are free and will always remain free.  This is not because I disagree with the concept of paid mods, but because I feel that I don't personally possess the time or skill to put out mods worthy of charging money.  Alongside that, being free has led to my tranq mod being the most downloaded tranq mod across all platforms, which I am happy to brag a little about.

That said, while the points are all valid, I want to say this:  There are definitely mods that people are trying to charge for that they simply shouldn't be charging for.  This is a mix of three bags: 

1:  The mods just aren't something that should be a paid mod.  Things like tranq mods, easy tek mods, etc... aren't deserving of being premium.  For anyone considering paying for a mod like this, there are free options that I am positive are better.  I'd love y'all to try mine, but I won't claim mine's the best.  Don't pay for tranq mods or anything that is on such a low level. 

2:  The mods are not in a state that are deserving of being premium.  These are primarily maps where the devs are charging for the maps, but issues exist like anti-mesh kill barriers existing in naturally accessible areas, incomplete maps that aren't cordoned off properly, etc...  Most of these, if the devs continue to work, will reach a point where they are worthy of the premium tag, but not in their current state.

3:  Mods that are not of a quality level that deserves being premium.  These are mods where, like my own, the devs haven't put out a product with the proper polish that warrants a price tag.  This isn't to say that the mods are bad, but when you pay for something, you expect a certain level of polish.  You don't expect default models, low res textures, etc..  You don't expect game-breaking bugs in mechanics.   You don't expect a developer that won't respond to feedback/request/etc.. from their players.

 

Outside of  that, however, there are some mods that are definitely worthy of the premium price tag.  One great example I'll give for this is Hexenlord's Omega mod.  He's put in a ton of work to make it of a quality and level that warrants the premium price, and I personally feel that the 10 dollar price tag is reasonable.  Omega is essentially a game in itself.  When a mod changes so much about the game that it becomes a whole new game, there is value in that mod.

 

*Edit*  I'd like to also point out that I'm totally against things like the Pyromane in their current form.  I can't fathom why snail games thinks that adding a pay to win DLC to all servers is a good idea... If that had been just another premium mod, it wouldn't have had the backlash it has.  Add it to whatever official servers, but gate playing on those servers by purchasing the premium mod... At least everyone's on an even playing field within that ecosystem...  

Edited by banggugyangu
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  • 2 weeks later...

I know I'm late to this discussion, but I feel like maybe I'm somewhat of an anomaly among console players at my age range (read as, I played pong in the 90s) I used to travel for work before i got sick, so consoles and hand-held have been my bread and butter. But I uh *cough* altered a few of my devices. And I bought, played, and loved subnautica in its most broken state, when it was a $20 work in progress on xbox. So I'm no stranger to mods, modded devices, and what the poop did I do moments.

I bought forgler. We were considering several maps, and I miss communicated the completeness of the map. Tbf I got map descriptions mixed up. At the time we wanted to support, sad to hear (and not just from this post) that's not the case. We have also tried several of the free mods, for my husband and I the mods were par for the course.

For our other friends that primarily play standard console stuff, it has been very jarring. Many of them complained constantly, blamed mods for problems not even remotely associated with the mod, anything to get the mods removed.

It got so bad we had to buy a separate server, leaving only the basic qol mods on the one with our friends. They still refuse to use most of them. Things like teleporters, cryo mods, tranqs (if I'm using your tranq mod, I love you lol) basically the only thing that gets used is the egg incubators bc noone could deny how much time it saves, we made a whole army b4 they had even a single thyla finished.

The unfinished nature of the only paid for mod that they bought, broke them completely. It was pretty, but large areas were not finished, many creatures were spawning in strange places in clumps that couldn't separate, the water areas were baren, bosses and artifact weren't all in yet, etc. We logged on layer once to see if at least the oceans had creatures and it was just over run with megs. Everyone sorta surmised that due to complaints the creator just dumped a bunch of meg spawns. This is not something a console player expects, or frankly wants. They use a console BECAUSE they don't want to deal with that sort of thing. If WC or SG got advise from anyone, a single person, about releasing unfinished mods on console the resounding answer would have been "No!" So either they didn't bother to ask/find out, or they simply don't care.

Scape goating: My friends will never trust the mods now, and we can't blame them. I do blame WC and SG, and if I was in the mod community, I would be so upset at them. Many of the problems they cause, the mods are being blamed for. The mod community is a scape goat. Your game crashed? Mods. Isn't running well? Mods. Any probablem at all, and playing vanilla? Mods. It's ridiculous. One of our players blamed not being able to find a plethora of doedys for days on the Bombardier beetle, that had been on the server for like 5 hours. 

Discord: I don't know a single person who plays on console, including myself, who wants to sub to dozens or more discords just to find out how a mod works/get updated info. A lot of developers release the mod, then never update the original blurp. I downloaded half a dozen mods that were not being kept up with/had been abandoned with no mention of this in the description. It took reading discord reviews to find out. Reviews on xbox are dumb as it requires you to leave the page and if you leave the page it stops and corrupts anything currently downloading or updating.

Lastly, if your mod is large, like maps, it takes a while to download. Many of these consoles are people's entertainment systems. It's their TV, Netflix, YouTube, etc. Chaining this down for hours sometimes (yes hours) is not something anyone should expect to go over well for a majority of the population of users. These are more casual gamers for the most part. My next upgrade will be a PC. (Obligatory *it is time*) that's not most console players. At this point you can essentially count any console player not actively planning to transition to PC as non existent for future estimates.

Just in case, I'm not speaking out of my bum. I have an anthropology degree. I was an archaeologist, I literally have a degree in studying humans and how they interact with the poop around them.

 

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Lmao, I guess I didn't catch all of my cursing and got censored, but it's funny bc poop is actually supper useful and well preserved poop (which has a scientific name but it's pre coffee time for me) can be considered a significant find. I actually 3D scanned quite a bit of samples for a virtual curation site back in college that I believe is open for public use if you would like your own 3D printed (I think it was) giant sloth poop.

 

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On 9/15/2024 at 3:41 AM, trashandglory said:

Scape goating: My friends will never trust the mods now, and we can't blame them. I do blame WC and SG, and if I was in the mod community, I would be so upset at them. Many of the problems they cause, the mods are being blamed for. The mod community is a scape goat. Your game crashed? Mods. Isn't running well? Mods. Any probablem at all, and playing vanilla? Mods. It's ridiculous. One of our players blamed not being able to find a plethora of doedys for days on the Bombardier beetle, that had been on the server for like 5 hours. 

Discord: I don't know a single person who plays on console, including myself, who wants to sub to dozens or more discords just to find out how a mod works/get updated info. A lot of developers release the mod, then never update the original blurp. I downloaded half a dozen mods that were not being kept up with/had been abandoned with no mention of this in the description. It took reading discord reviews to find out. Reviews on xbox are dumb as it requires you to leave the page and if you leave the page it stops and corrupts anything currently downloading or updating.

 

On these two notes: 

1, blaming mods for problems present in the vanilla game is short-sighted and foolish.  If they try to claim that problems don't persist in the vanilla game and that these problems are mod-specific, that's just foolish. 

2,  I don't think any of us developing mods trust WC or SG to actually do the right thing.  Most players know this as well.  I personally trust some of the mod developers far more than I do WC or SG. 

3,  Curseforge is a dumpster fire most of the time.  My mod descriptions consist of a very brief description of the purpose of the mod and, if not in a complete state, the fact that it's not finished and a description of what it will become.  From there, everything else about my mods are pinned in mod-specific channels on my Discord server.  I get complaints about this all the time, but I WILL NOT be changing this approach for a couple reasons.  First and foremost, I'm not charging for my mods.  Creating mods takes time.  To make your mods good, it takes more time.  As such, to see any return from my mods, I need to direct traffic to my monetized platforms.  This includes my YouTube/Rumble channels and my Discord server.  With the exception of any mod I may make that completely overhauls the game entirely (full conversion mod), I won't be making any premium mods at all.  The second reason why I won't change my approach, however, is centralization of information.  It's far easier to control what information is available about my mods within the confines of my Discord server which I have full control over.  By centralizing all information about my mods to that server, I have a single place to keep updated.  I have a single place where people can ask questions and get a timely response from either me directly or members of my Discord community that are eager to help.  This is substantially more efficient in every way than trying to update CurseForge.  My Discord server also has community servers for various games that I pay for out of my own pocket, but any members of my Discord community are free to play on.

I can't do anything about the piss-poor mod loader integrated with ASA.  I'll give WC props for integrating a mod loader into ASA, but the execution is bleh, indeed.  This gives even more reason to NOT focus on the CurseForge page of my mods, and instead focus on what I actually can control.

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@banggugyangu The real issue is that players never wanted premium mods, and still don’t. Some of these mod developers are making a significant profit, despite trying to downplay it—and that’s just the plain truth. I know several of them personally, and I’ve seen it firsthand. Players shouldn’t be forced to pay for premium mods just to play on unofficial or even official servers. Wildcard promised to address this back in June, but nothing has changed, and it probably never will. We're tired of being nickel-and-dimed just to join servers.

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I'm sorry, but that argument simply doesn't hold water.... You aren't forced to buy mods...  If you don't want to pay for a mod,  then don't pay for it.  It means that whatever server has that mod, you're not able to play on,  but that's the decision you have to make.  And I'm sorry, but making a mod properly is a LOT of work... people that spend the time to make something worthy of being premium deserve to be paid what that is worth...

Also,  you're making a very large blanket statement speaking for a lot of people that simply don't agree.  There are MANY players that are happy to pay a few bucks to their favorite mod's developer as thanks.

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I'm sorry but what "fix"?  I don't think you're talking about the same thing I'm talking about.  I'm not trying to act like ASA isn't struggling, but the REASON ASA is struggling isn't premium mods.  The primary reasons ASA is struggling are 1:  The abysmal practice of implementing pay2win tech in a game like ARK.  2:  The MANY broken promises from Wild Card regarding ASA.  3:  WC's inability to meet a single launch date in the history of their whole company.  4:  The massive performance issues that are even worse than ASE had, and ASE was already a performance nightmare.  Premium mods are NOT the problem.  Again... you are not ever forced to buy a premium mod.  You just simply can't play on a server that uses them without buying them.  Choose a different server.  There are a plethora to choose from.

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10 hours ago, banggugyangu said:

I'm sorry but what "fix"?  I don't think you're talking about the same thing I'm talking about.  I'm not trying to act like ASA isn't struggling, but the REASON ASA is struggling isn't premium mods.  The primary reasons ASA is struggling are 1:  The abysmal practice of implementing pay2win tech in a game like ARK.  2:  The MANY broken promises from Wild Card regarding ASA.  3:  WC's inability to meet a single launch date in the history of their whole company.  4:  The massive performance issues that are even worse than ASE had, and ASE was already a performance nightmare.  Premium mods are NOT the problem.  Again... you are not ever forced to buy a premium mod.  You just simply can't play on a server that uses them without buying them.  Choose a different server.  There are a plethora to choose from.

Well said. On point 1, the choice to de-feature (Cryos) and re-feature via Premium Mod (Pyros) has put a lot of returning players off.  Adding a new meta mechanic (Traits) and making it DLC exclusive has had the same effect. However, is DLC the same as Premium Mod? If you are paying for extra content in the same game, then yes and both are used to good effect in other games. My opinion though is that this is not WC driving this, its Snail. Same with the launch dates. I think they are told when to launch and have to try to meet the expectation. It is badly managed from the top.

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@banggugyangu  @TonyTempah I recommend both of you read Wildcard's statement directly from Crunch 408. The premium mods are creating issues by restricting access to servers, and this needs to be addressed. Most players are playing on unofficial servers. Premium mods on unofficial servers are overly restrictive, especially when you're just trying to play with friends without constantly being nickel-and-dimed by mods. Which is what's happening. They should keep their commitment to resolving the problem. That said, I agree with all your other points. I provided the quote and link below.

Quote

 

As we draw closer to the release of Premium Mods on console (currently going through cert), we have some updates based on feedback we’ve received from the community regarding how Unofficial Servers that used Premium Mods felt like they were too restrictive. This was definitely not the intention of the system and with our partners, Overwolf, we aim to resolve this as soon as we can. So here’s the plan:

This summer we’re going to give UGC Creators the capability to remove the server-join restrictions on their Premium Mods. Essentially, we’re giving them the ability to create an “Unrestricted Premium Mod”.

What this means is that, they’ll be able to create a new type of paid mod, which can be hosted on a server that does not prevent you from joining it if you do not own the mod. Instead, Creators can determine how they want to control access to the content of the mod. For example, if there’s an Unrestricted Premium Mod that adds a new set of weapons, the creator can prevent people from specifically crafting or using the weapons, or other gameplay aspects  rather than preventing people from joining servers hosting it, as it currently does.

Additionally, this system will also allow Creators to make some aspects of their mod disregard ownership so even if you do not own the mod, you can still get some of the gameplay changes.

We believe this flexibility will allow both Creators to balance out the features in the mod, as well as ensure that they can be hosted on Unofficial Servers without preventing restriction. A huge thank you to the ARK community, your feedback is invaluable as we shape the future landscape for modding!

Community Crunch 408: Introducing Ceratosaurus from ARK: Additions - ARK News - Page 2 - ARK - Official Community Forums (survivetheark.com)

 

 

Edited by Tiberius3223
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49 minutes ago, Tiberius3223 said:

@banggugyangu  @TonyTempah I recommend both of you read Wildcard's statement directly from Crunch 408. The premium mods are creating issues by restricting access to servers, and this needs to be addressed. Most players are playing on unofficial servers. Premium mods on unofficial servers are overly restrictive, especially when you're just trying to play with friends without constantly being nickel-and-dimed by mods. Which is what's happening. They should keep their commitment to resolving the problem. That said, I agree with all your other points. I provided the quote and link below.

 

Thanks for this. Interesting read. 

So when you host an Ark server, you have to buy Ark base game right? Same for DLC and Premium Mods? I know you can pay Nitrado to have a fully loaded server but was curious about the mechanics of hosting on your own tin.

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16 hours ago, banggugyangu said:

I'm not trying to act like ASA isn't struggling, but the REASON ASA is struggling isn't premium mods.

It's true that premium mods are not "the reason" ASA is failing, but then none of the reasons you listed are "the reason" either.

The reality is that ASA is failing for multiple reasons. You've made a good list, but you have to include premium mods on that list because it's one of the reasons, among multiple reasons, that are causing ASA to fail. If ARK only had one problem, broken promises, premium mods or any of the others on your list, then the game would almost certainly be doing great. It's the sum total of all the reasons, including premium mods, when added together that are causing ASA to fail.

Premium mods may not be on your personal list, maybe you don't care about them at all, and that's perfectly reasonable. You don't have to care about the same things other people care about. But that doesn't mean you can exclude it from the list of reasons, because it does matter to a lot of other people.

Edited by Pipinghot
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5 hours ago, TonyTempah said:

My opinion though is that this is not WC driving this, its Snail. Same with the launch dates. I think they are told when to launch and have to try to meet the expectation. It is badly managed from the top.

That's just playing into their company deceptions. The difference between WildCard and Snail only exists on paper, it's a legal fiction for business purposes that isn't meaningful in any real sense. The people who own/lead/manage Snail are the same people who own/lead/manage WildCard. It's not "WildCard vs. Snail", it's really "WildCardSnail".

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@TonyTempah When hosting an Ark server, whether it's dedicated, self-hosted, or privately owned, players must purchase all premium mods themselves in order to join and play if the server has them installed. The server or session will not allow you to join otherwise. This creates a barrier for private server owners, like myself and others, as we're forced to avoid using premium mods. No one wants to pay extra just to play with friends or a group on unofficial servers, where 99% of the player base actually plays. As you know, the official Ark servers are notoriously bad for countless reasons, making unofficial servers the preferred choice.

Wildcard was supposed to have already addressed this issue, but once again, they can't keep a deadline, or their word.

Edited by Tiberius3223
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Quote

That's just playing into their company deceptions. The difference between WildCard and Snail only exists on paper, it's a legal fiction for business purposes that isn't meaningful in any real sense. The people who own/lead/manage Snail are the same people who own/lead/manage WildCard. It's not "WildCard vs. Snail", it's really "WildCardSnail".

You're absolutely right. In my opinion, Wildcard shares a lot of the blame at this point. The developers have allowed Snail Games to take advantage of them and could do much more to prevent these poor business practices, but they choose not to. They're just as greedy as Snail Games, because it's literally the same people. Which is why we see a lack of communication from the community manager, poor game design decisions, and more. Don’t be fooled.

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@banggugyangu 

I’m sorry, but you're mistaken about the issue of premium mods. It's one of many factors pushing players away from the game, as reflected in numerous reviews. I highly recommend taking the time to read what WC has posted. There are countless reasons why ASA is struggling, and premium mods are just one part of the problem.

Also, WC really needs to step up and respond. It's been months, and we still don’t have fixes for unofficial servers, DLC, or premium mods. We're tired of being restricted by content that should be optional and not paywalled.

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